The CIA is funding a study examining various ways mankind can geo-engineer the planet -- blocking or limiting the sunlight that reaches the Earth, stripping carbon dioxide from the skies, seeding the clouds and so on.

The project, a panel called “Geoengineering Climate: Technical Evaluation and Discussion of Impacts,” is backed by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NASA -- and the U.S. intelligence community.

The death toll from two earthquakes in China's western Gansu province has climbed to 89, with more than 500 people severely injured, after 1,200 buildings collapsed and tens of thousands more were badly damaged, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The quakes hit eight towns in the remote and mountainous Minxian and Zhangxian counties, about 105 miles (170 kilometres) south-east of the provincial capital, Lanzhou, from 7.45am on Monday (12.45am BST), Xinhua said. -- "Many have been injured by collapsed houses," said a Minxian county doctor surnamed Du. "Many villagers have gone to local hospitals along the roads."

“Don’t use that term!” she said. “It makes you sound like a crazy survivalist.”

Well, I’m not crazy and I don’t consider myself to be a survivalist in the traditional sense, but if we hope to draw others into the ranks of preparedness, our loved ones in particular, then maybe we should consider how others perceive us.

Here are a few reasons why I think “normal” people shy away from anything related to the prepper world. [TSM]

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Recently, we told you about an exoplanet that rains glass. Sideways. Which got us thinking: 1.) we will never complain about the weather here on Earth again and 2.) surely that's got to be the worst place to live in the entire universe. But no! With the help of NASA and Kepler astronomers and a couple physicists, we found nine additional wildly inhospitable planets. Of course, you wouldn't survive too well anywhere in the universe that isn't Earth, but these places would be particularly awful--places with conditions "well-matched to Dante's visions of hell," as physicist Steve Tufte describes one of the planets. Check out the most miserable planets in the universe.

The operator of Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant said on Monday that contaminated ground water had likely been flowing into the sea, acknowledging such a leakage for the first time.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco, made the announcement a day after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's pro-nuclear Liberal Democratic Party and its junior coalition partner scored a decisive victory in elections to the upper house, cementing his grip on power.The head of Japan's new Nuclear Regulation Authority, created since the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami wrecked Fukushima, said this month he believed contamination of the sea had been continuing since the accident.

A strong earthquake struck a rural part of western China on Monday morning, killing at least 75 people, according to state media.

The quake hit near the city of Dingxi in Gansu province, a region of mountains, desert and pastureland with a population of 26 million. That makes it one of China's more lightly populated provinces, although the Dingxi area has a greater concentration of farms and towns, with a total population of about 2.7 million. The government's earthquake monitoring service said an additional 459 people were injured.

New Zealanders ran screaming from buildings in Wellington yesterday as a magnitude 6.5 earthquake blew out windows and caused part of the city’s port to slide into the sea.

The earthquake struck at 5:09 p.m. local time and was centered offshore, 57 kilometers (35 miles) south-southwest of the capital city, at a depth of 14 kilometers, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was New Zealand’s biggest quake since a magnitude 6.3 killed 185 people in the South Island city of Christchurch two years ago, and the strongest to hit the central region of the country since 1942, GNS Science seismologist John Ristau said.

A catastrophic mud eruption in Indonesia blamed on drilling by an oil company might instead have natural causes, new research suggests.

In 2006, the largest mud volcano on the planet was born when steam, water and mud began erupting on the Indonesian island of Java. At its height, it spewed 6.3 million cubic feet (180,000 cubic meters) of boiling mud per day, enough to submerge a football field under nearly 110 feet (34 m) of earth. The mud volcano still erupts with outbursts like a geyser.

If it’s sunny where you are, make the most of it. Thunderstorms, flash floods, hail and gusty winds for some parts of the country are forecast for the week ahead. While Britain is one day away from its longest heatwave since 1976, and temperatures will hit 33C for some today, areas in the southwest experienced showers over the weekend as the low pressure system that is set to bring the bad weather moved in.

Brendan Jones, a forecaster for MeteoGroup, said that the conditions were perfect for thunderstorms and – with the ground bone dry in many areas – flooding too. “The main motors for thunderstorms are high humidity and high temperatures, which we have had in abundance – it’s storm fuel, if you like,” he said.

Fire pits are both a popular design feature for homes and a practical way to keep a fire while camping. In both cases, constructing a quality fire pit is essential for safety and effectiveness. Fire pits provide great ambiance in addition to the practical concerns of warmth or cooking. Constructing a fire pit while camping is as easy as stacking some rocks in a circular form and starting a fire in the middle. There are some details to take into consideration when constructing a good fire pit. These will ensure that your fire pit is safe and contains the fire well.

There's a club open to people from all around the world, but you wouldn't want to join: The club is exclusively for people who've survived a lightning strike.

Lightning strikes kill about 24,000 people worldwide each year, and about 240,000 people are injured by lightning and survive. But even decades after being hit by lightning, survivors can continue to experience devastating long-term effects. Because a lightning strike zone can carry thousands of volts of electricity per square foot, severe nerve damage is common among survivors, who often report cognitive problems like memory loss, an inability to concentrate and personality changes.

The threat of weekend thunderstorms could bring much-needed moisture to a huge wildfire in the Southern California mountains near Palm Springs. Unfortunately, it could also bring wind, lightning and other volatile conditions that could make a tough firefight even worse.

Combined with hot air on the ground, the unstable air could create a strong updraft that draws smoke high into the atmosphere, fire spokesman Captain Mike Lindbery said. If the smoke column rises too high, moisture at the top could freeze and the weight of the ice could cause the column to collapse, creating a powerful downdraft in all directions.

Monsanto and their biotech buddies would have you believe that they are super-heroes, set on saving hungry children from starvation wearing a dazzling fake-green cape. In fact, in a recent attack on activists, Monsanto’s CEO Hugh Grant said that because critics “can afford” organic food, we don’t care about the plight of those who can’t afford it. “There is this strange kind of reverse elitism: If I’m going to do this, then everything else shouldn’t exist,” said Grant. “There is space in the supermarket shelf for all of us.”

Even Monsanto’s website is on the defense, with page after page attempting to justify what the biotech industry is doing to our food supply. It must be true if even leading “philanthropists” (and I use this term loosely) like Bill and Melinda Gates are behind the distribution of Monsanto crops across the globe. Right? [THEORGANICPREPPER]

Being wiped out by Terminators is one of humanity's greatest fears, when it's really wishful thinking. We flatter ourselves that the machines would need hyperalloy killingmotrons. The average modern human isn't even a match for a malfunctioning escalator, and millions are already being defeated by nothing more than phones with pizza on speed dial.

If the machines ever do become sentient and dispatch deathbots, it'll only be to make us feel better, because the devices that already know our weaknesses are just too embarrassing. [CRACKED]

Before this year the H7N9 bird flu virus linked to 133 human infections and 43 deaths was never seen in people. All the available evidence suggests that an effective biological barrier apparently kept a pandemic at bay -- humans only contracted the novel virus via direct contact with poultry or environments such as live bird markets rather than by human-to-human transmission. New analysis from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), however, suggests that the virus is closer to becoming a disease transmitted among humans than previously thought.

A lack of co-operation between South Asian countries is preventing timely flood warnings that could save lives and property during the monsoon season.

Erratic and extreme rainfall is causing catastrophic flooding, most recently in northwest India and Nepal following heavy rainfall in June. But the sharing of hydrological data can be a sensitive issue because of disputes over water use. Officials say a network is required to share data across borders. Experts and officials told the BBC that countries in the region are doing very little to help each other forecast floods.

The temperature isn’t the only thing getting hot these days. If you’ve been outside, you may have noticed tempers are flaring.

As CBS 2’s Dr. Max Gomez reported Thursday, the hot weather does a lot to our behavior. There’s road rage, air rage, fan rage at sporting events, and now we have heat rage. It’s not new. It’s actually part of our language. Tempers flare, anger simmers and boils over, and of course there’s the proverbial hothead.

The U.S. East Coast is sweating through a lingering heat wave this week. The sweltering heat and humidity have combined to keep temperatures hot even at night. But relief may finally be in sight.

Heat waves are marked by at least three consecutive days of temperatures of at least 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius). In New York and Boston, temperatures hit 90 degrees F or hotter Sunday through Wednesday, and are expected to do so again today (July 18). New York has already reached 96 degrees F (36 degrees C) by 1 p.m. EDT today. Baltimore reached a record high of 98 degrees F (37 degrees C) yesterday, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.